


DC2: Ghosts

by WichitaRed



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 05:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13001061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WichitaRed/pseuds/WichitaRed
Summary: Ghosts...isn't it Kid who, usually, falls into gunplay situations? Then why is Heyes stepping up?Destiny’s Cycle (DC) follows the Outlaw days.. what does Destiny have in store. Each month, I get a challenge, and then the cycle continues. You can follow KC, HH, & the gang through their adventures. DC does link together, but some tales stand on their own. Yet, its building its own world history, inside jokes, characters, places, etc. I hope you enjoy DC. Feedback WELCOMED!





	DC2: Ghosts

“Ghosts”

 

The room turned toward Billie’s barked command.

The boy’s expression, coupled with the way his Adam’s apple was struggling to move in his dry throat, let all watching know exactly how close fear or, maybe his brashness had him to pulling his pistol.

Kid Curry though, remained impassive as the march of time. He was waiting for the moment, when he would be required to put this boy down, just as he had so many before him. The big dog, little dog game always ended the same, it ended with blood. Blood and, usually, screams.

It was the screams that disturbed Kid. They reminded him of when the raiders had come to their farms, so long ago, when he was a boy. The blast of the Colt and even the spewed blood felt perfectly natural to him. But, it was the screams, he loathed. They wrung to the surface a tainted shame, which made him wish, more than anything else, he could halt this relentless circle of cordite and blood. But, he had made his choices and his choices had led him to be the gunslinger legend, this boy was now challenging.

Behind Kid, Hannibal Heyes uncoiled from the chair, he had been so contentedly enjoying, and rose to his feet. Any sound he made, was lost to the racket of saloon patron’s hustling from what looked like, too close a proximity, to harm’s way.

Heyes’ jaw canted a bit to the side, his brows lowering, and he took a step closer to the action. He was trying to understand where the fog surrounding Billie Boy had come from. Another step and his brows were furrowing so deep, the ridge of his nose had picked up a definite wrinkle. The odd mist was boiling thicker from Billie, trailing out across the filthy, scuffed, wood floor and a line from Macbeth nattered through Heyes’ thoughts, ‘… double, double toil and trouble…’

Beside him, Kid exhaled, his nostrils flared, and in a low, detached voice, he stated, “walk away.”

Not only was the rising, swirling vapor bewildering, but Heyes also felt positive, he could smell the bitter, irony tang of blood. Slanting his eyes toward his cousin, he could see without asking, that Kid was not experiencing anything out of the ordinary. With this simple realization, a flash of heat raced across Heyes’ skin, leaving behind a prickling trail of cold sweat. Taking a breath, he closed his eyes, pulling his lower lip through his teeth and when he reopened them, the gray fog was coalescing, becoming. . . becoming. . .  He swallowed hard. Becoming forms, no, men.

Men swathed in blood drenched clothing, and their eyes, their cold, haunted, soulless eyes were boring accusingly into his cousin.   

Heyes’ mouth went dry. His hands rolling into fists, except not quite, because his right tightened around the smooth, hard butt of his Schofield, that had been hanging utterly forgotten in his hand. With a spastic jerk, his arm came up; the Schofield coming to bore on the advancing specters.

Billie’s eyes bolted wide open and his hands rose in the air. “Mister, I ain’t got any beef with you.”

Kid’s blue eyes, slowly shifted to his partner and saw there was sweat trickling along the angled lines of Heyes’ face. But what bothered him most, was the stunned countenance his pal was wearing. Because, even though Hannibal was staring right at Billie, Kid knew in his gut, it was not the boy that held his cousin’s attention.

Then Heyes took a step forward.

The step put him amidst the broken men of their past, the men of Kid’s past. Some of their names he could not recall, others only where they had been, when they were shot down. The ones closest raised their arms toward him, their grasping hands clutching at empty air. They shambled forward, their disjointed movements causing ragged skin to flap apart, revealing gruesome twisted, splintered bones. But the ones closer to Billie, these ghosts were worse. For their gunshot bodies oozed, a black cream that reeked of rot while their lax faces and gaping mouths, brought to mind the graves they lay in. ‘They are _not_ real,’ a frantic corner of Heyes’ mind shouted, over and over, like the clattering clang of a fire brigade’s brass bell.

Unfolding his arms, Kid reached out, the fingers of his left hand brushing across Heyes’ shirt sleeve, “partner?”

Shying from the light touch, the corner of Heyes’ mouth tugged down, his nose scrunching tighter, the rest of his face, smoothing out like silk, till not a line or wrinkle existed in his hard mask. Without a word, he tipped back the hammer of the Schofield.  

“Mister…” Billie gulped, shuffling back.

“Partner!?”

Heyes eyes flicked briefly to his cousin, his soft brown eyes were black and hard as a chunk of coal in a forge. And, he took another step forward, followed by another; his long strides carrying him straight through the accursed apparitions, which he had come to realize; only he could see. Still, their touch chilled him to the bone, twisting his guts till he felt he wanted to spill out all he had drunk.

Billie’s glossy, wet, blue-eyes kept darting from Heyes’ face to the .45 caliber Schofield’s barrel aimed at him, until he could no longer see it, because it was digging into his chest. “Please, Mister, please, I didn’t mean---.”

The look Heyes lay on the boy stifled his words. With an inaudible snarl, he snatched the Colt from Billie’s holster skid. He could hear Kid coming up behind him, and stepping off Billie, Hannibal Heyes threw a hard look at his partner that flowed right back around to the boy. “What kind of ingrate invites death to stand beside ‘em?”  He asked, frowning severely at both blue-eyed gunmen.

The batwing doors were still flapping behind him as Heyes stepped down from the boardwalk. He opened the Colt’s cylinder; the six brass cartridges tumbling out, bouncing off the toes of his boots to thud softly in the dirt. With a grunt, he threw the revolver from him and inhaled deeply. Exhaling, he inhaled again, hoping the fresh air would wash the stench of decay from his nostrils.

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
